


Null Hypothesis

by exAm



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Dark Comedy, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, M/M, Multi, Stalking, Teasing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 11:25:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11943165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exAm/pseuds/exAm
Summary: Plot divergence AU, changes in key details of the plotIn a world where L had sensibly made Light give him all his personal belongings in case they were somehow compromised and examined all evidence he foils Light Yagami’s shred of the death note in a watch plan.Light goes back to being a brilliant, kind student.L uses the death note and dates Light to taunt Ryuk whom he blames for creating Kira. This is heavily L/Light in later chapters but with the addition of Ryuk who has to haunt L and is forced to be voyeur to it.





	Null Hypothesis

**Author's Note:**

> A dialogue-heavy romp through a world where L found the note then didn't pass it around because it was clearly dangerous. 
> 
> I changed the warning, still features non-con elements, non-con fantasies, the intentions are there... the ability is not.
> 
> Null hypothesis, described for you not science-y people, is the thing that logic would have you believe unless your investigation into a matter proves otherwise.

“According to these rules… only a human who touches the note can see you?”  
  
“L Lawliet…” The shinigami needed to start by establishing who exactly had the power here since L would know already he could kill with a simple name. “Yeah, I only have to stick around if it’s my note, and they choose to use it. The rules of the note aren’t all in there. Some of what is there is questionable, some of it written by another human as he had learned additional rules.  As the note’s owner I feel they are something like graffiti.”  
  
“I read them. It seems like a terrible idea to ever use it.”  
  
“How dull.” The Death God drew out those two words overlong. He leaned deeply into his right side to work out a kink growing in his back.  
  
“I’m sorry. Was I supposed to be more excited about the death note?” L asked, sucking the edge of his thumb and digging his toes over and over into the plush couch he was lounging on.  
  
“I can already tell you are going to bore me to tears. I will take my note and leave. Unless you have a plan for the note other than saying very obvious things to its owner?”  
  
“I'll use it to find Kira.” L stated plainly. Oh no Ryuk wouldn't stick around for a mad goose chase with the unattractive and sugar-obsessed. No no no. He'd grab the note back the second the human had his eyes closed again. He'd take it back right now.  
  
“Great! You’ve done that." Ryuk congratulated him sarcastically. "Can I take my magic book and go now? I don’t foresee someone like you having a use for it. There are no good samaritan reasons to have the note and no humanitarian ones. For example, I can’t do anything to extend the user’s life and the user can’t extend lives either. I’m not interested in loaning it to people like yourself.”  
  
“Are you taking responsibility for being Kira then?” L traced under his bottom lip and rocked a little as if the thought required slight self comfort. It would have made him wrong about Yagami-kun after all should a supernatural being have been on earth mediating a sophomoric black-and-white idea of justice.  
  
“No shinigami who exists cares about things like human criminals and human justice. Don’t be ridiculous.” Ryuk cackled.  
  
“… It seems like you at least knew Kira personally to say something like that.” The detective observed.  
  
“I don’t like where this is going. I won’t help you further.” He should have never said anything at all. This man had an infuriating ability to go lightening fast from new information to the formation of accusations.  
  
L arched his left eyebrow under his black rat's nest of hair. “Ah, okay.” Ryuk’s indirect confirmation of his deepest suspicions made him feel tetchy, “You must want to say goodbye to him then. You spent a lot of time together by my estimation. Aren't you frustrated I’m not going to pass the note around and let others on my team look at it?”  
  
“This is an idiotic conversation.” Ryuk growled at him. His normal pleasured voice changing until he shook the very air with his anger. “Goodbye forever, Lawliet”  
  
“Oh. Let me take care of that.” L said, opening the black notebook he quickly scrawled a name into it without the least bit of hesitation. Ryuk stalked forward annoyed and looked over L’s shoulder. His mind’s eye took him to an image of the intended victim. It was the name of an old Japanese man, 'Naoki Kohsuke' in the city hospital closest to them. A man already dying of terminal cancer. L continued to write more details after the name, orchestrating that he was to die a peaceful death in 23 days.  
  
“I will use the note since I must use it… I’m not pretty, conniving or fun to watch like he was, but I believe that means you’ll have to stick around and at the very least watch.”  
  
“…You should be warned: I hate boring things and it’s dangerous to court a shinigami’s hatred.”  
  
“It was dangerous to inspire my own.” L said flippantly, opening a sugar packet and pouring it directly into his mouth before taking a swig of his black tea.  
  
“See you in 39 days then, you weird asshole.” 

This guarantee of being haunted was amongst the few written rules of the note so L nodded in acknowledgment. He turned back to his work.  
  
“Have fun pining over at Yagami-kun’s place! Not that he can see you or anything.” L waved a half-hearted goodbye to him having become engrossed in his computer; never looking away from it even as Ryuk floated away muttering blasphemy to himself.  
  
———  
Ryuk rode out the month and 9 days by going in between the shinigami realm to gamble with his friends and coming back to earth to people watch. L was not wrong about what he did in the interim either. Death Gods were strangers to the emotion of shame. Light Yagami was fascinating even without a magical weapon of destruction on hand. He followed Light’s return to his prestigious college. Watched Light resume court socially as if he’d never left Todai. Felt vaguely amused by the young men and women of every social class and attractiveness level who vied for the man’s attention. He had a good laugh at Light’s many professors who were spellbound by his class work and personality. Heard Light Yagami talk and commingle warmly with nearly everyone but the two beings on earth who most desired his conversation.  
  
The shinigami wished dearly that it was not a rule that the death note could not be offered more than once by the same Death God to the same user. He missed their talks; that gentle laugh that sometimes had mingled with the Death God’s own more exuberant and near constant one. He missed that elegant hand extending towards him to toss up juicy red apples.  
  
However, if his own half-assed plotting, based on his limited understanding of the rules of the note, wasn’t entirely incorrect, he merely had to wait. The chime of Light’s comfortable laughter would ring for him once more. Then Light could go on being absolutely brilliant, so very amusing with his use of Ryuk's note.  
  
Eventually he was pulled by the invisible leash of the Death Note's magic to the eccentric detective's side, away from Light's perfect little snowglobe world where others' accolades, love and lust fell over him constantly. L kept doling out mercy deaths to sickly people who would have passed on painful and slow-like anyways because he suspected without regular use the Death God might be able to reclaim the note from him or that he may forget its existence or why he had it. Ryuk had to see every single victim in his mind's eye. He'd sigh in annoyance. It was grating, a total waste of the note.  
  
Ryuk was bored out of his mind because the detective rarely left the floors of HQ. An entire floor sat unused save for the corner where he worked with about 20 different computers and TV at the same time. Absolutely none of those were trained on Light Yagami anymore. There was nothing for the God to follow, he wrote new cryptography and read recent quantum theory all day long. He ate cake but took no time to appreciate it. He did not share apples with Ryuk. He didn't share anything. Though to be fair there was nothing to share, he didn't have anything resembling an actual meal in his kitchen.  
  
Finally, after days of this monotony, Ryuk lost it a little, “I didn’t create Kira. Why do you intend to keep me here?”  
  
“Oh?” L turned to him creaking in his little spinning chair and tilted his head a little too far to one side. “What enormous mental pressure for a young man, suddenly knowing they can’t go to heaven or hell. Additionally that their destiny is to only suffer because they ever used the note. It would take an uncommon personal character not to let that kind of information change your personality at such a young age.”  
  
“I didn’t make those rules.” He argued.  
  
“You dropped the Death Note on earth knowing them.”  
  
“Death Gods actually don’t fully understand the note. I can’t force any human to use the note. Listen, if you are going to keep me here could you at do me a solid and give me apples? They're the best thing about this sad little world.”  
  
“The way I see it…” L took a solid breath inwards like he was preparing to give a speech.  
  
“Hm?” Ryuk shouldn't have encouraged it but he did anyway.  
  
“The alchemical difference between Light Yagami, a future upstanding citizen of Japan, and Light as Kira, the God-wanna-be mass murderer… was not this note fallen into his hands; the catalyst from Light Yagami to Kira has only ever been you.”  
  
What an annoying assessment, “You let the boy go back to school. He’s out of your life. Nothing is stopping him from getting to whatever shining, wonderful destiny you think he has. Why are you harping to me about him if you’ve exonerated him?”  
  
“Why won’t you admit it was him? What are you protecting him from? I already know it was him and you’d already implied it the first day we met.”  
  
“…Talking with you is always a mistake. I should have learned that earlier.” Ryuk said glumly.  
  
“I will give you an apple if you’ll be consistent about your story. Tell me what he was like.” The detective offered, sort of bouncing in his chair.  
  
“It’s going to take more than one apple.”  
  
“Five then. Five at once.”  
  
Ryuk couldn't help but snap as soon as he'd decided it couldn't hurt to talk, he was stuck here and bored and anyway he needed an apple more than he could even start to explain, “I had nothing to do with the boy’s freakish affinity for the death note. All previous humans I’ve ever heard of - the use of it gnaws at them. They’d always killed themselves or asked us Shinigami how to forget they’d ever had it. You look to me like I was a mastermind of his actions. I was only looking for brief amusement. He refashioned that bound paper into wings to soar above normal humans. Don’t insult the mysterious logic of the note. Don’t insult a human who understood the note like he’d been born to use it.”  
  
“Your metaphor is telling.” L observed, chewing on a hangnail. It was one of many nervous tics which made the rail-thin ethnically ambiguous man unsettling.  
  
“What are you saying? Go get me these apples you half-mast prick. You can bore me by interpreting metaphors after that.”  
  
“He’s an angel in your eyes.”  
  
“Says a much older man I’ve watched slobber to video footage of this same man when he still a 17 year old, put him in chains despite him clearly being of no physical threat to you and lay awake in bed beside him staring at him. You’re obsessed with him.”  
  
"The legal age in Japan is very low." L said in monotone.  
  
"Gross. Look I liked him. You liked him. Everyone likes Light Yagami. Kid's got charm. "  
  
“He was suspect of being the most prolific mass murderer the world had ever seen. All of my actions were calculated and taken as those most likely to make him confess.”  
  
“I’ve watched enough of you humans to know a frustrated queer man when I see one. Aren't you 25? I was looking out for him a little bit and honestly you concerned me the most of anyone he encountered. **I** find you unsettling and I’m a God of death.”  
  
“You’ve said you liked him.”  
  
“I liked him because he gave me apples. He wasn’t afraid of me. He didn’t try to manipulate me. That doesn’t mean I liked him like you like him. He was less annoying than you other humans. That’s all. ”  
  
“Didn’t you haunt Higuchi for the sake of Kira?”  
  
“I visited Higuchi because Rem was haunting him. What are you getting at.”  
  
“Uh huh. So, you haunted Higuchi even though he didn’t have your note for what reason?” L says in that voice that let’s Ryuk know the pale man thinks he’s learned something valuable.  
  
“I merely dropped by. I sure as shit wasn’t going to hang around Higuchi more than I had to. That dude smelled bad and he had terrible taste in television. Rem took on a hard job with that one.”  
  
“You did that for Yagami-kun. You watched over a person, even briefly, who both bored and disgusted you. I imagine for a creature with your level of dislike for such a task… that might be inspired by an emotion like love.”  
  
“Is it dramatic theories only hour? How about this dramatic truth instead. Did you know as an ancient god of death I can tell you to kill yourself in an arduous and nightmarish manner, using for example, the dull pencils in your desk jammed one by one methodically into every pressure point in your body by your own hand.  That you would have to execute that order to the letter as your final act on this little planet?”  
  
“If you could kill me I’d already be dead. You have no patience for me. You can’t kill me because it would extend his lifespan. You told me earlier - a death god can take no action that would extend the life of a human. I intend to put kira to death once I’ve figured out how to present the evidence to Interpol.”  
  
“Oh, I promise you; I will write your name. I’m going to write his, too. You are both mine to rid this filthy little world of.”  
  
“Then why not now?”  
  
“Watching you in these slow death throes still isn’t as boring as hanging around in the shinigami realm.”  
  
“Okay.” L said and he turned back to his multiple monitor set up immersing himself in research. Ryuk had learned that when he did that it was the equivalent of him walking out of the room. His ability to tune out everything else while looking at the shiny screens was impressive. He usually forgot to eat as well.  
  
“Okay!?” The shinigami was in disbelief. “Where is my apple?”  
  
“I lied to you about Yagami-kun; he’s not off the hook now you’ve confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt he was Kira. I’ll have to find a trackable way to keep him from harming others.” L decided, then, “I've lied about the apples too.”  
  
The Death God groaned. “You’re testing my patience, human.”  
  
————-  
Many months went by and L had not made good on his claim that he would bring Light Yagami back into the headquarters or string him up for being Kira. Ryuk wondered what Light had been up to. He’d grown used to not eating apples anymore. He supposed they really were like cigarettes to Shinigami. He'd gone cold turkey and now he no longer craved them. The memory of how they tasted was losing clarity.  
  
The memory of Light Yagami however was conversely haunting him. He couldn’t dream but his mind could take him places that already exist or have existed, and it kept taking him back to the moment Light told him that he had prepared, in all seriousness, for the death god to take him away. The first day he’d met the boy.  
  
Sometimes the fancy gripped him that he should have played along with that human myth of the demon up from hell to steal the soul of a damned human. Would the other shinigami have even noticed if he hid a human away in the realm? Light would have died swiftly though, he’d have maybe had ten years for his original 60 plus- human time moved incredibly quickly in the shinigami realm.  
  
The police say Kira had stopped murdering people. The police also told L that unless the fees for his services can be significantly reduced he would have to quit his work on a case now gone cold. He was given until July to find other employment. L spoke to them through the voice modulator that he intended to stay in Japan until he didn’t intend to stay there anymore.  He reminded them he was indecently independently wealthy. It was a very L thing to assert.  
  
The Japanese police thanked him profusely. They said they believed the pressure of L’s deductive power scared Kira into inaction or best case scenario shamed kira into killing himself. L doesn’t accept their thanks. He’d never left a case unsolved, he said.  
  
“As long as Kira isn’t active.” Soichiro Yagami said while representing the Tokyo police to L, “We will announce to publicly you’ve solved this case by the end of this week. We will not besmirch your name. We think it best to let the public believe Kira is gone for good because it is our assessment he would not have simply stopped killing - he was too narcissistic for that.”  
  
“Please do not say I’ve done anything I haven’t done. It is against my personal code. I didn’t take on the Kira case for Japan’s police force. I didn’t take it on for my name as a detective. I took it because I will ultimately solve it as I do any case that interests me. I will unmask Kira for the world and I suspect doing so will end the growing cult of personality which even now deifies his actions.”  
  
“L-sama, you have taken care of this and it is over. You actually can’t choose how we represent the case to the public. That was in your contract. We will not hesitate to rehire you in the future should another case of near supernatural difficulty arise. You have proved yourself undoubtedly the greatest detective of modern times.”  
  
“I disagree this is over but I understand your reasoning. Thank you for your time.”  
  
L shut off his laptop. He powered down all his devices and he hit a button that turns off all the lights on the floor he’s on. He sits in the dark, slowly breathing like a forgotten ritual and for the first time so far, while watching the man’s ego bleed, Ryuk thinks the man might be interesting.  
  
It didn't make him care enough to ask whether or not the British man was going to be okay.  
  
Together he and the strange pale human waited in the dark.  
___________

L got out of the shower and looked up at him but Ryuk felt his eyes were squared with his as if he’d suddenly grown the extra 2 feet Ryuk had on him. “You are always incorporeal on earth?”  
  
“What’s the point of this question?” Ryuk countered. He didn't like to feed L’s intellectual curiosities the way he had done for Light with pleasure at times.  
  
“Sometimes I can’t help but suspect you must have been with Kira. He wasn’t going to remember you when you were gone. Surely you must have taken advantage of that.”  
  
Ryuk laughed darkly, shook his head in annoyance and topped that off with an eye roll. “We don’t have human desires.” This was true, they didn't, their desires were the desires of Gods, set across a longer time-line.  
  
“What if I asked you to touch me?” L said, seeing through that as a lie.  
  
Ryuk suspected a trap. Still, this was the most interesting thing the man had said in weeks.  
  
“Yes, what if you did?” He intoned with mock pleasantry.  
  
“Well can you?” L was really going to go there, huh?  
  
“Hold the note and you can touch me first. If I like it I might respond. You seem touch deprived - that’s a problem for you humans.”  
  
L dried his hands thoroughly and wrapped his waist in a towel. He went to his bedside table where he kept the death note. He held it in his left hand then paced forward to Ryuk’s form expecting to walk straight through him as he had a couple times in these months he'd been haunted. Instead his outstretched hands met cold flesh that felt like soft PVC encased steel.  
  
Ryuk froze as the wiry man dug his free hand into the feathers collar of his sewn-on shirt and used it as leverage to wrap his legs around the death god’s waist.  
  
The God needed no further hints. He’d been getting unusually lucky for a shinigami recently. His last time had been Rem during their interlude together on earth and she’d told him she’d hated every second of it but her actions belied her words. He missed the way she smelt of Misa’s cherry blossom incense now.  
  
Humans were soft, malleable, killable creatures and it wasn’t in Ryuk’s nature to be careful but killing a human with something other than the death note, even by accident, was an extreme violation of the rules and immediately punishable by death for shinigami. He gripped the man in turn and they fell back onto the bed as L Lawliet pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Liar - trickster God,” He said loudly into his ear. Ryuk pressed his hard-on into the man whose eyes widened at the bulk of it.  
  
L suddenly dropped the note from his hand and he fell right through him into the bouncing embrace of the bed. “You’re a slave to your desires as much as any human is.” Though he said it confidently; he also seemed shaken.  
  
Ryuk growled at this new torture. He wished, and not for the first time, that he could drag L into the shinigami realm and rip him apart only to reanimate him; over and over again.  
——-  
From that point forward, the tension between L and him only thickened. He couldn’t look at L Lawliet anymore without wanting to half-fuck half-kill him. Now whenever L undressed or showered the God made sure he knew he was watching. Staring at him through the walls no matter how he turned away. He was in some discomfort for his short exercise in being an unforgivable dick tease. And if L lifts the note to use it, which he does maybe twice a week, the Death God traces down his back with his talons. Whereever he touches he uses an extremely mild version of a withering magic he possesses to make the human's skin temporarily go numb.  
  
But L was correct. He cannot kill the man without sentencing himself to the dust. Though he doesn’t want to admit it to himself he knows he meets the criteria for ‘loving’ the human Light Yagami - at least by the mystery logic of the note. L for sure poses a threat to the young man. Even though he’s made no move to re-associate with him in ages.  
——  
  
Light Yagami as he stands in front of the two of them is deliciously fit, looking prim and proper dressed in a black slim-fit suit with purple piping and a purple square handkerchief peeking from his right pocket. His hair is coifed perfectly around his angelic face. Damn, Ryuk’d missed the outrageously beautiful auburn-haired Japanese man. His visual presence by itself was like a glass of water in the desert after days of unquenched thirst.  
  
“My father told me you were leaving for an unknown destination in another country, Ryuzaki. I came here while I still knew where you were; not to bother you too much, but because I wanted to thank you for clearing my name. I’d also like to clear the air once and for all with you that I understand why you were suspicious of me; whoever Kira was they had a similar profile to myself. You proved that much to me during my days in captivity. I wanted to thank you for the time I spent chasing kira with your team. I learned a lot from you. I aspire to be someone like you.”  
  
“You should leave Japan with me if you feel like that.” L states matter-of-factly. "Does that sound good?'  
  
“Wha-?” Light stuttered.  
  
“You are intellectually similar to me. Intrinsically you have some traits I don’t - naturally immaculate manners and social skills. You can be of great help to me. You don’t have to waste time aspiring to be like me. You can be L along with me.”  
  
“Ryuuzaki… I’m uh… flattered but I haven’t heard from you in six whole months. I’m in my second year of To-Ou now. Also I have happy news in my life - Misa Amane and I are engaged to be married. I think you are getting nostalgic for the Kira case when you should be grateful that it’s really over. I know I am.” He adjusted his tie and looked a bit flustered.  
  
“You proposed to her? Do you even remember why you are with Amane-san?” L chides him. L can’t even imagine what it must be like to be so perfect that an idol like Misa Amane would throw herself at you. That she’d hang on your every word. But two pretty people were not meant for one another just because they had complimentary looks.  
  
“Of course I do. I met her when she was out in downtown Tokyo just a few months before the case began. When I saw her I knew instantly I had to talk to her. What more could a man want from life?”  
  
“You two aren’t the least bit similar. You don’t think it’s odd?” Ryuk was cackling now at L’s palpable jealousy. Of course Light Yagami would have filled the blanks in his memory as many passionate nights with the pretty and petite young woman. Unlike L, Light Yagami was mostly straight and he was a healthy red-blooded male.  
  
Ryuk snapped his fingers to himself then, annoyed at his misfortune. He never even got to witness the two lovebirds rutting except for some muted kissing and over-the-clothes fooling around when Light was Kira trying to win her over for his own use of her note. If they were engaged they were probably doing it all the time now.  
  
“Are you that jealous of me, Ryuuzaki-kun?” Light laughed uncomfortably and pinched the bridge of his nose like he did in those rare moments when he was about to say something that is awkward for him. “You know, I don’t think she’d ever think you are cute. You held her hostage and then kept me away from her too long for that. But I’ll send you an invite to the wedding; she also considers you our friend.”  
  
“I don't care about that! I’m offering you a chance to spend your days amongst giants. Marrying Misa will lock you down in one place. You are better than that.”  
  
“Why are you talking about Misa like she’s a pawn in some game!” Light's voice rose with emotion, “I didn’t say that I ever wanted to be better than anyone!” He asserted, getting up from his chair, starting at L over the glass table like he’s going to grab him. Then seeing L move fluidly to counter him he moves back away to the other side of the table.  
  
“Great men don’t make the choice to be great. It shines through their every action. Why limit yourself if you have that potential?” L said breathing a little heavily since Light had cued up his fight or flight response.  
  
Light glared at him and then laid into him, “I shouldn’t flatter you then, L… I wasn’t being fully honest when I said I want to be like you. I only want people to look up to me like they look up to you. I’ve questioned your methods; your shifting and unclear morals. I already have a man I can look up to, my father. He’s a simple man with firm morals who doesn’t cheat others. Maybe living like that won’t get me to where you are and I may never be famous but I’ll be able to sleep at night and it doesn’t look like you have in years.”  
  
Ryuk slowly clapped for Light’s speech. The full usage of his admirable observational skills was as always stunning to watch play out. A fantastic tear-down of both the offer and the reasoning behind it.  
  
“You are not a simple man!” L was outraged.  
  
“You never seemingly knew who I was, L. Though, that’s alright. Because I never knew who you were either. I don’t even know your name.” He starts to button his coat to leave but his OCD makes him correct the placement of the cake he brought L on the table first.  
  
“Don’t leave here yet. We may never see each other again.” L exhales. Ryuk and him both know that isn’t true. L will see Light whenever the hell he wishes it. He’s employing guilt to keep the younger man in the room.  
  
“Then maybe you should have tried a whit to be less abrasive.” Light said, beginning to walk away.  
  
“It’s L Lawliet.” Ryuk’s jaw dropped to the floor. L was clearly desperate to be telling the man he knows to be Kira his real name.  
  
Light pauses, turns to him and looks extremely put out.“You don’t have to lie to me with an even more unlikely fake name than a man of mostly white ethnicity who is somehow named Ryuzaki.”  
  
“That name is real. My mother was half-Japanese but my father was a French diplomat so she named me after her favorite sound in French.”  
  
“I’ll stay for a slice of cake if you’ll spare me from a fake backstory different than the fake one you’d previously told me.”  
  
“I swear it I'll tell you no more fake stories.” Light looks at him like he's done.  
  
“I don’t feel like hearing it, okay? I’m sorry I was so rude to you just now but no. You’ve always brought the worst out in me. No one else can do that.” L responded initially with requested silence.   
  
Silently, for a few minutes, Light distributed the multi-layered crepe cake to two pieces of fine china inlaid with Japanese chrysanthemums, he made them earl grey tea and poured it for both sides of the table. He prepared it from memory the exact way L preferred. A stack of sugar cubes as high as the level to which he fills the cup. After passing it to the detective, Light took delicate bites of the cake with a small fork. L was finished with his first piece by the time Light was three careful bites into his own.  
  
“My mother was half Japanese. Her name was Emiko.” L provides, still being honest and Ryuk knows it because when he says her name he can see Emiko Lawliet in his mind’s eye who died young and had been gorgeous like a painted doll. Ryuk shakes his head to clear it. That image certainly run counter to his expectations. “I wasn’t coming out of left field with my alias.”  
  
“Japanese people don’t get bent out of shape about western ideas like who exactly can have what kind of name. It’s pretty clear your real name is not Ryuzaki, though. “Dragon’s cove” - it’s an over-the-top name.”  
  
“Your last name means “Night God’. Your first name is written as “Moon” which your family chose to pronounce as “Light” implying, I believe, ‘Light of the moon’; so, ‘God-of-the-night-by-the-light-of-the-moon’- Sama, I don’t think you get to judge me for choosing a dramatic pseudonym.”  
  
This breakdown of his kanji makes Light laugh sheepishly because he's realized L is right.  
  
Ryuk felt a wave of strong affection move through him and sat down on the couch beside Light who could neither feel him nor see him. He contributed to the conversation, of course only L could hear him, “That’s part of the reasoning of why I dropped the note near him. I lied to him I never chose him to use the note. He didn't need the ego boost.” He mades a motion with his huge taloned hand like as if to ruffle hair but he moved nothing out of place. “That name looked like the calling card of a death god. It’s an unusual name.”  
  
“I might have been too extreme in my initial offer. I would like to continue to associate with you.” L said, ignoring Ryuk steadily, with a mouthful of a second slice of cake he which has unceremoniously pulled from the box. “I apologize for being rude about your fiancé. You two will make… a lovely family.” Ryuk can tell he only means visually.  
  
“What if I offer to stay one extra month and train you in what it is I do? If nothing else you can act as a liaison for me in Japan in the future. I have some dealings here.”  
  
“I don’t think I have the time. My schoolwork has become substantial now, I’ve taken on multiple dissertations and Misa and I spend our weekends together.”  
  
Ryuk could feel the annoyance which emanated from L though he masked it. “Do you have a criminology course you are taking?”  
  
“Yes…that’s a portion of my dissertation work. I’m of course not at liberty to speak about our secret work on the kira case but I am able to use it to build new theory around more effective typologies.”  
  
“Let me speak to your professors. I’ll create an applicable work-study for you. I have nine PhDs from Oxford and Harvard and a fellowship. I’m well equipped for the academic world.”  
  
“Ryuzaki… is this really all this is? Some training with you and insight into your deductive methods?”  
  
And Ryuk heard what the young genius was not saying, he’s not saying, ‘I won’t consent to being your captive again.’  
  
“If you consider that an easy enough matter to say something dismissive like ‘all it is’, yes.”  
  
Light laughs at having brushed up against the older man’s ego, and the sound is like gentle bells. “Alright then. Show me the paperwork and I’ll give you my time.” He finished the last bite of his cake. “I’m going home to my fiancé. I’ll see you when I see you.”  
  
Light walks out of the place and summons his elevator down. There’s a long beat after Light enters the elevator and the doors automatically shut. L throws a plate against a wall and cradles his head in his hands; rocking back and forth like he’s been wounded.  
  
“You just let the former most dangerous man in the world dress you down, L Lawliet. I like how he correctly read and shut down your interest in him. That was very amusing indeed.”  
  
“Ryuk?” L said.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“One. Shut up. Two. I may be forced to let him be Kira again. I can’t have him ruining his life. There’s so much he’s…”  
  
Ryuk cut him off by laughing uproariously after it processed for him what the man has said. Oh, he'd been wrong that L was boring. How reckless the man was willing to be for the sake of his libido! Telling Kira his full name, his real history then picturing handing the note BACK!? Damn, had the God ever been wrong.  
  
That night for the first time, Ryuk explored a burgeoning desire he’d been feeling for the hard-to-read but clearly lovesick British man. Knowing that L was fast asleep and that no human camera could record his presence; he floated on the bed beside and above him and brings himself to quick completion just imagining how the intellectual might respond to being ravaged by him.  
  
He wanted to make the detective stretch out his often hunched back with the unimaginable pleasure only a God could provide.

———————-

Ryuk watched the deep bows given by officials of To-Ou, watched grateful tears shed over hourlong conversational exchanges that illuminated subject matter which had previously been unclear for the specialists L spoke with, watched a table full of some of the most important people in Japan’s premier university convene over the seemingly limitless intellectual potential of Light Yagami… over the potential to excel that L “Hideki Ryuga” confirmed to them and that all these heads of departments were quick to agree with.  
  
The paperwork was sorted quickly thereafter. L showed it to Ryuk with a shit-eating grin. L was in charge of not some of but all Light’s dissertation work for his Fall semester. He had somehow rolled the diverse disciplines being pursued by Light Yagami into an intensive singular project that if completed would be some of the most stunning new information to come out of the To-Ou undergraduate program in recent history.  
  
He was also being paid an adjunct professor’s fee to do the work-study with Light. To-Ou wanted to officially keep any coursework 'Hideki-sensei' created for his mentee.  
  
He emailed Light the result of his inquiry into his school work situation. In Ryuk’s mind he envisioned the young man cursing L for having inventively recaptured all his time. Pacing back and forth the way he did when he was irritated then sitting down crossing his legs only to get that determined set to his brow.  
  
Then he’d be agreeing anyway because the project would be fascinating to his mind, combining the cutting edge of at least four disciplines and it wouldn't take him away from his current goals.  
  
Light's email response back demanded four days apart from L per school week. L demanded five with him, six if the coursework called for it. They don’t compromise because L argued him into a corner. As always, L got his way.  
————-

L has Watari prepare a bedroom for Light like he might be camping out in HQ. When he goes to inspect it, five days before the man is due to start his schoolwork with L, Ryuk decides it’s time he should make his intentions towards both men known to the one of them too far gone to do anything about it.  
  
“Lawliet-kun, remember how there exist many unwritten rules for the death note?”  
  
“Even for someone without my flawless memory that would be a hard piece of information to forget.” L says off-handedly while fluffing one of four 1000 thread count pillows on Light’s intended bed. Ryuk says nothing about how unlikely it is that the young man will willingly stay overnight there.  
  
“You know I don’t have to tell you them at all. And I might be making some of them up when I feel like it. I thought I should tell you one additional one anyway. Since you toyed with me in the past I’d kind of been dying to tell you. But I’d wanted to wait until after it became applicable to you.”  
  
“Spit it out, Ryuk.”  
  
“Rule 47. If the user holds the note over six months long; the ultimate fate of the user is given over to the original owner of the note. - That would be me.”  
  
“Alright, alright you kill us.” L says. Sighing to himself because he’s found a frayed edge of a sheet. He starts to take it off the bed to send it back; get something perfect in exchange. “You already told me that.”  
  
“Not exactly. I could have always killed you. Your ultimate fate is different than your lifespan’s end. Ultimate fate is an eternal conditional. I can decide what happens to you in the next world. I can keep you from the nothingness that is the ultimate fate of most living beings.”  
  
“If you were that powerful you wouldn’t be bumming around on earth watching me prepare a bedroom for a college kid. If you were that powerful you’d already be back with the person you most want. Light.” L says, in preemptive denial that the God before him is now in control of what happens to him after his death.  
  
“It’s not about being powerful or not. Light Yagami, Misa Amane and yourself are the only humans to have ever used the death note for the extended period of time enough for this rule to become applicable. Most humans last about a month with a note. Light used the note much more than any previous human user so an additional set of rules apply to him that do not apply to you. The shinigami, Rem, who took Misa’s ultimate fate on is not interested in using it so she will only suffer the typical fate of a death note user. Unluckily for you, I am very interested.”  
  
Ryuk continued, laying the framework for a complex threat,“I’m not entirely sure how controlling your fate will work but I can tell you one thing… if I’m in control you will not know peace after you die." He buttoned his sentence with a maniacal laugh.  
  
“We’d be your slaves, then? You seem like the sort who'd enjoy that.”  
  
“Are you even worth that? Maybe I’ll sell you off to an actual demon in the afterworld. I could use the gambling funds.”  
  
“I see. He and I will have to figure out how not to die.” L sounded serious.  
  
“…” The shinigami does not know how to respond to that level of denial.  
  
“Or, much more reasonably, the two of us will figure out how to kill you.” Oh, the man was completely serious.  
  
Ryuk’s face twisted up in the parody of a smile and he contorted his back responding with a low dangerous laugh. He supposed the human could try; but only one of them in this room was a predator.


End file.
